Local mom fights to keep daughter in country

Published 7:00 pm, Tuesday, May 25, 2004

A Woodlands mother hopes a new state law to prevent international child abductions by a foreign-born parent will help her fight to keep her 6-year-old daughter in the United States.

Michelle Madsen said Friday she lives in constant fear of her ex-husband, Muhammad Tello, of Houston, abducting their daughter Sarah and taking her to Syria.

"He wants to take her to a terrorist country where women have no rights," Madsen said. "She would not be able to return without her father's permission."

However, Tello, who renounced his Syrian citizenship when he became an American citizen in 1995, said he simply wants to take Sarah to Syria for vacation in July.

Tello has joint custody, which allows him custody for the month of July.

"I want Sarah to meet her family and see where I grew up," he said. "I am an American and am not moving back to Syria."

The potentially precedent-setting case to stop Sarah from going to Syria ended up in 9th District Court Judge Fred Edward's courtroom Friday.

But the case was postponed until 9 a.m. June 4 after Edwards recused himself from the case because of previous personal conversations with Tello.

Madsen's attorney, Harry Tindall, of Houston, said the case to restrict the juvenile's travel overseas is one of the first cases since the new law, which was passed in the 78th Texas Legislature, took effect as part of the Family Code in September 2003.

"I think we have a solid case from keeping a 6-year-old girl from going to a dangerous country," Tindall said.

The new law outlines abduction-prevention measures, such as requiring supervised visits or ordering travel controls when risks exist.

The law listed some risk factors as threatening to take the child, lacking financial reason to stay in the United States and a parent having strong familial, emotional and cultural ties to another country.

Before the new statutes took effect, the same case was heard March 17, 2003, by traveling Judge Lee Alworth, who granted Tello permission to take Sarah to Syria as provided in the divorce decree.

"The only evidence I have regarding any trips to Syria that he might take or any abducting that he might do is that he has had four and a half years to do that, and he has not done it yet," said Alworth, according to a court transcript.

"That is the best evidence that — of how I feel he might conduct himself in the future, and the only evidence I have beyond speculation."

But Tindall thinks the new law will change the decision.

And he has an army of supporters lined up.

Cathy Brown and Teresa Lauderdale, child advocates with Prevent International Parental Child Abduction's Houston office, came in support of Madsen Friday.

The two women are credited with drafting the new legislation after experiencing the situation first hand.

Lauderdale said she has secured court-ordered supervised visits for her two children after her Syrian ex-husband threatened to take the children, 3 and 6, away.

Maureen Dabbagh, a PARENT (Parents Advocating the Recovery through Education and by Networking Together) advocate who flew down from Virginia, was not so lucky.

Her daughter Nadia was taken by her father to Syria in 1992 when she was 2 years old and has never been seen again.

Larry Whyte came to tell his horror story about having to pay a gang to recover his daughter, now 9, from Russia after exhausting the legal system.

"We settled in mediation that my daughter would live with me," Whyte said. "A judge allowed my wife to take her on vacation overseas, and they never came back."

Whyte believes the new law would have had given the judge more pull.

"And I would not have lost my daughter for three years," he said. "I was lucky to be able to afford what I did."

But on the other side, Houston doctor Tammi Samman said she travels with her children and their father to Syria each year.

"It has been safe for us," she said. "We left our kids there for weeks with my in-laws."